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Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Pro Motherboard Review: Page 4 of 9

A Closer Look

After peeling the film from the motherboard, we really enjoy the aesthetics of the black/silver color scheme and Aorus branding. The first few things that really caught our is the Aorus branded badge/MOSFET heatsink as well as the included M.2 armored heatsink covers. The M.2 covers are a very welcomed feature that not other helps to dissipate the heat, but also helps hides those green PCB M.2 drives. It evident that Gigabyte carefully planned out the board connections as they placed all of the fan connections near the edges of the board. This is quite nice and really helps maintain a clean build without having fan cables going across the motherboard.

The Aorus branded MOSFET heatsink is mostly black with a center brushed aluminum mid-section that has an RGB lit “AORUS” written on it. You can also see that the power delivery does include 12 + 1 digital power phases.

Moving toward the right of the board, you have the 4 x DDR4 ram slot that includes 3 RGB LED strips in-between them. On the edge of the board, you have both 3 and 4 pin RGB headers, 2 x fan/pump headers, 24 pin connector and a USB 3.0 header. Right below the ram slot, Gigabyte has also included a USB Type-C header with USB 3.1 Gen 1 support.

Looking at the ram slots, you will also see they have been reinforced with steel. This really ties in with all the silver accents of the board and provide that little extra support when installing the ram modules.

Like the MOSFET heatsink, the Aorus badge is black with a brushed aluminum center with an RGB lit Aorus logo in the left-hand corner. Like most motherboards, you have the system I/O on the bottom right of the boards. Something that Gigabyte has done differently is color-coded the inside of the connector. I could see this definitely being helpful when wiring the case to the motherboard.

Included on the motherboard are two M.2 slots that are compatible with both M.2 SATA and M.2 PCIe SSD’s. The top slot support drives up to 110mm in length with the lower slot up to 80mm in length.

Taking one of the M.2 covers off reveals an installed thermal pad with a blue film still intact.

The Aorus Pro contains three PCIe 1x slots, one PCIe x4 slot, one PICe 8x slot, and one PCIe 16x slot. With the 16x and 8x slot primarily used for heavy GPU’s, Gigabyte has reinforced the slots with a steel cover that also ties in nicely with the silver accent of the board.

Looking at the onboard audio, Gigabyte went with a Realtek ALC1220-VB codec and uses Hi-Fi grade WIMA FKP2 and high-end audio capacitors. They have also added a little RGB flare with a faint line of LED’s going through the audio components.

The back of the motherboard includes the CPU backplate and the audio LED in the lower right of the board.

The back I/O from left to right includes: 4 x USB 2.0, HDMI port with HDCP 2.2 support, 3 x USB 3.0 (Blue), 2 x USB 3.1 Gen 2 (Red), 1 x USB Type-C, Gigabyte RJ45, Audio I/O with an optical S/PDIF output. It’s nice to see that the I/O plate is attached to the motherboard which we are seeing more and more on mid-range boards. You will also see the Aorus logo on the I/O backplate which like the MOS heatsink is also RGB lit.

The Aorus Pro includes 6 x SATA 3 connectors that can be configured in RAID 0/1/5 or 10. Note that if you have an M.2 SATA drive installed in the top M.2 slot, SATA3 1 will be disabled. Also, if either a SATA or PCIe M.2 drive is installed in the lower M.2 slot SATA3 4 and SATA3 4 are disabled.

On first boot of the Aorus Pro, the onboard RGB LED’s are an orangish yellow matching the Aorus brand and look stunning on all the onboard RGB elements. Our favorite of the RGB’s has to be the Aorus badge with the brushed aluminum finish.

The upper heatsink sporting an RGB lit “AORUS” brand name.

The LED’s nicely matching the installed Team Group Vulcan TUF ram modules.

A complete look of a lit up Aorus Pro with a Corsair H115i cooler and EVGA 1070 FTW GPU.